Oh No, Another Holocaust Movie

www.afilmunfinished.com

I was talking with a friend today about "A Film Unfinished," the new documentary about a Nazi propaganda film shot in the Warsaw ghetto. I reviewed it last week and still can't get it out of my head (perhaps that's why I described it as "haunting"). But not because the footage was so shocking, upsetting or rare (which it is), but because it was able to alter my emotional understanding of the Holocaust after so many years of thinking I had wrapped my head around its awfulness.

There are plenty of films about or related to the Holocaust. So when another one comes out, you can just feel the unspoken (usually) groan of "Oh no, another Holocaust movie." I don't begrudge people that --unless it's coming from the "can't these Jews just get over it?" perspective, which I've heard before and pisses me off to no end.

But whether a film is based in truth or just pure imagination, it all comes down to compelling storytelling. And if you can rationally argue that we've used up every story, every struggle, every shred of the human condition from the Holocaust, then perhaps it's time for us to stop making films entirely.

However, if you're going to take your audience down this well-traveled path of horrors, then you better bring something new -- whether it's facts, style or perspective. Thankfully, "A Film Unfished" does in at least four ways:

• it provides the general public access to rare film footage of the Warsaw ghetto, normally available only to researchers;
• deepens our understanding of the Nazi propaganda machine through newly discovered outtakes and an in-depth investigation of Nazi records and post-war trial transcripts;
• shocks us out of our emotional detachment to black-and-white "history" with striking color footage of life in the ghetto;
• and it warns us by showing how a supposedly "civilized" Western society can segregate, degrade and dehumanize a group of people in plain sight.

Sadly, I have no doubt that my new depth of understanding will be applicable to the "history" that lies ahead.